DHS delays Eagle awards until June

The Homeland Security Department has announced that contract awards for the Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge solutions IT procurement vehicle will be postponed three months.

The contracting vehicle, also known as Eagle, is the DHS' huge acquisition package for consolidating its IT services. Through Eagle, which is valued at upwards of $45 billion, an unspecified number of IT contractors will receive indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts for IT system and support services to meet department missions.

Proposals were due in November 2005 and awards were expected in March, but the award date now has been pushed back to June.

"The DHS Eagle Acquisition team was pleased with the robust competition achieved with the submission of proposals," states an amendment published by the department March 16. "Proposal evaluations are ongoing and contract awards are anticipated in June 2006 for the unrestricted track and July 2006 for the small business set-aside track."

The department has set a goal of 40 percent for the percentage of Eagle contracts to be designated for small businesses.

In a related recent announcement, systems integrator Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md., said it has entered into a mentoring agreement with two small business partners to pursue Eagle contracts: TCoombs and Associates LLC of Lorton, Va., and Advanced Technologies International of Germantown, Md.

The firms were selected because of their experience in network security, database management, network management support, help desk, video conferencing and cyber security, Lockheed said in a release.

The Lockheed Martin team is pursuing work in three of Eagle's five functional categories: infrastructure engineering, operations and maintenance and software development.